As a result of feminist
duress, first the Professional Darts Corporation and then Formula One announced
that they will be forcing walk on girls and grid girls into unemployment under
the pretext that the tradition is "at odds with modern day societal
norms".
As usual, the feminists
and social justice warriors driving this are confused about what 'societal norms'
are. Societal norms - a term that is problematic at the best of times - are
created, not by top down hegemony, but by bottom up local decisions that result in net utility for the decision-makers.
The societal norm that means
most of us don't drop litter, spit at one another or play loud music late at
night is based on society's aggregation of revealed
preferences. In other words, most of us don't like those things so we don't do them. It is the individual search for utility and the collective aspiration
for cooperation that decides societal norms - and the irony being missed by those opposed to grid girls is that individual search for utility is far and away the most widespread societal norm that exists.
When feminists and social
justice warriors tell us society should be opposed to something freely chosen because
it departs from the rubric of 'societal norms', like jobs for women in sport, all
they are really doing is forcefully imposing their own beliefs and views on
people that have different wants, needs and priorities. They are doing the
opposite of what they claim: they purport to be standing up for women, but what
they are actually doing is trying to rob a proportion of women of something they
value.
Madeline Grant makes an
excellent point along those lines in this article:
"One great irony of the ongoing debate is the
fact that, while the BBC and other employers are enduring a forensic
examination over gender pay, feminist campaigners are backing moves to upset
one of the few areas of economic life in which women have a clear advantage –
the ability to trade on good looks – or “erotic capital”, to borrow Catherine
Hakim’s phrase.
Jobs in pole dancing, high fashion, hostessing and the
promotional modelling work, performed by the Formula 1 grid girls, all enable
women to trade on their beauty. Often, the opportunities for beautiful women
far outstrip those granted men. Fashion modelling, for instance, carries a
female premium of anywhere from 25% and 75%."
This kind of
short-sightedness stretches far beyond cases like this - the whole business is
riddled with contradictions and inconsistencies, and most of them are based on one
of two things: they either a) misunderstand how equality of outcome and
equality of opportunity have to be traded off against each other, or b) fail to
account for the factors surrounding revealed preferences and the liberty and
freedom to enjoy them.
For example, they just
cannot seem to grasp the basic principle that in a society in which everyone is
totally free (within reason) to act in accordance with their preferences and priorities,
the result will be a diverse assortment of highly unequal outcomes. Different
people will trade on looks, on talent, on education, on risk, on unsociable
hours, on physical strength, on interpersonal skills, on entrepreneurialism, and a whole range of other
things that are valued differently in the marketplace, and that generate varying salaries accordingly.
Of course, when people are
being unfairly treated, there is a human need to leap to their defence. How
ironic here that the people being unfairly treated are those women who want to
trade on their marketable assets but are being robbed of their income because
of feminists' confusion about how societal norms are constructed.
Because, you see, it's the revealed preferences of individuals that make the trading on looks, on talent, on education, on risk, on unsociable hours, on physical strength, on interpersonal skills, and on everything else valuable in the marketplace, possible.
Feminists and social justice warriors need to wake up to the fact that these are the societal norms - and they are based on the fact that society is a multifarious mix of different people who want different things, and not always the same things feminists want or should feel entitled to demand to further their own narrow ideology.
